'The victor raised himself from the dead, all stained with the blood and
soil of the battle. Quintus gazed upon him astonished. For here was no
rude soldier, nor swollen boxer, but a youth merely--a youth, slender and
beautiful, fair-haired, and of a fair complexion. His loins were girt with
a slave's tunic. Pallid were his young features; his limbs wasted with
hunger and toil; his eyes blood-streaked as those of the deer when the dogs
close upon its tender life.

'And looking down upon the huddled priest, fallen in his blood upon the
dust, he peered long into the dead face, as though he beheld it for the
first time. Shudders ran through him; Quintus listened to hear him weep or
moan. But at the last, he lifted his head, fiercely straightening his limbs
like one who reminds himself of black fate, and things not to be undone.
And turning to the multitude, he made a sign. With shouting and wild cries
they came upon him; they snatched the purple-striped robe from the murdered
priest, and with it they clothed his murderer. They put on him the priest's
fillet, and the priest's cap; they hung garlands upon his neck; and with
rejoicing and obeisance they led him to the sacred temple....

'And for many hours more the boy remained hidden in the tree, held there
by the spell of his terror. He saw the temple ministers take up the body
of the dead, and carelessly drag it from the grove. All day long was there
crowd and festival within the sacred precinct. But when the shadows began
to fall from the ridge of Aricia across the lake; when the new-made priest
had offered on Trivia's altar a white steer, nourished on the Alban grass;
when he had fed the fire of Vesta; and poured offerings to Virbius the
immortal, whom in ancient days great Diana had snatched from the gods'
wrath, and hidden here, safe within the Arician wood,--when these were
done, the crowd departed and the Grove-King came forth alone from the